Next of Kin

by James Tucker

  Now he heard banging sounds, as if someone were trying to bash in one of the doors or the walls back in the bedroom area. Increasingly careful, he moved soundlessly into the kitchen, checking both sides of the center island for someone lying in wait.

  Crash! CRASH!

  The noise in front of him echoed through the house as he sensed someone approaching him from behind. He spun in a circle and found himself aiming his gun directly at Ms. Gallatin.

  “Mr. Mills?” she said, ceasing all movement. “It’s me—Rose.”

  “Stay behind me!” he ordered.

  They heard new sounds from the hallway to the bedrooms. Ms. Gallatin might not have recognized them, but he did. Gunshots fired through a suppressor, what many referred to as a silencer. But in the quiet house after midnight, the sound of the shots was shocking, jolting him into a state of intense awareness.

  Raising his gun, gripping it with both hands, he charged out of the kitchen and around the corner into the back hallway. He saw an indistinct figure in the faint green light of the battery-powered smoke detector attached to the ceiling. It wasn’t Mei or Ben but larger than both. Dressed all in black with a black mask. Kicking at the door to Ben’s room.

  Ward heard the door lock give way.

  He stopped, breathed in and then slowly out, to steady himself. Then he fired two shots. A double tap at the torso.

  The figure spun backward, away from Ben’s door, into the center of the hallway. Ward heard an expulsion of air, as if the bullet had hit the lungs or chest. The figure raised an arm, pointed at him. He heard a shot and jerked to the side. Then he fired again at center mass.

  Another expulsion of air, but no grunt or groan or cry. The figure turned away from Ward and ran toward the window at the end of the hallway, not slowing or stopping but diving headfirst through the glass and out into the yard.

  Even as the glass shattered, Ward fired another two rounds at the figure, and then rushed along the hallway to Ben’s door. He stood outside and called, “Ben? Are you there? Are you all right?”

  No sound came from inside the bedroom.

  He felt a great weight on his shoulders. Ben was gone. The bullets from the intruder’s gun had penetrated the door and struck the boy. But where was Mei? Had he lost her too?

  “Mei?” he called from outside the door. “Are you all right?”

  He listened carefully, thinking he heard the rustling of bed linens or clothing. “Mei?” he called again. “We’re alone again. The attacker’s gone.” He turned and motioned for Ms. Gallatin, who’d followed him into the hallway, to come to the door. He didn’t need to explain. She knew Mei was more likely to trust her than anyone else in the house.

  She put her face near the doorjamb. “Mei? Ben? This is Rose Gallatin. It’s over. The person who broke into the house is gone. We’re standing out here. Are you and Ben all right? Would you please say something?”

  A rustling noise from inside the room. Faint sounds of feet on the wood floor.

  “Ward?” came Mei’s voice.

  “Yes. Are you and Ben hurt?”

  “We’re okay.”

  Sobs and then crying. Ward knew it was Ben, terrified by the attack, the third attempt on his life in recent days. He wondered how much longer Ben could survive, physically and mentally. How often someone could save him. Ward believed this was the last time. Fate couldn’t be pushed too far. During the next attempt on the boy’s life, he or Buddy might not be present. There might not be an escape down the fire stairs of the Carlyle Residences.

  And there were no more secret tunnels hidden behind pantry shelves.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Buddy woke. Tensed at the sound of the burglar alarm. His arm shot out to the nightstand as he grabbed for the Glock.

  But then he realized the loud noise wasn’t the alarm system but the ringer on his phone. After letting go of the Glock, he picked up the phone and saw that it was Ward calling at one thirty. He swiped the screen and said, “What happened?”

  Ward said, “Everyone’s all right. But someone cut the power and disabled the generator and thus, the security system. The person then cut a hole in the window of Mei’s bedroom.”

  Buddy felt his stomach tighten.

  Ward said, “Mei got out in time, went to Ben’s room, and locked the door. Someone tried to bash and shoot his way into Ben’s room, but by that time I’d run downstairs and shot him. At least twice.”

  Thank God, Buddy thought. The case was solved. At last, Mei and Ben were safe. He said, “Describe the killer.”

  “I can’t,” Ward said, disappointment in his voice. “He had a Kevlar vest. There’s no blood on the floor and he’s gone.”

  Buddy felt like he was going to vomit. He slid out of bed, stood up, and began pacing the room. He breathed deeply and tried to relax his shoulders. His skin went hot and then so cold he began to shiver. “Fuck,” he said. “You didn’t go after him?”

  “Couldn’t. I had to make sure Mei and Ben were safe.”

  Buddy imagined them safe but with broken bones and smashed faces. “Injuries?”

  “None. But they’re shaken up.”

  Buddy stood straight. “I’m driving to your house. Now.”

  “That would be a waste of your time.”

  Buddy pounded his left heel into the Persian rug. “I’m coming up!”

  “Look, Buddy. The entire Greenwich police department is here. The coroner’s here, too. The attacker took down my two security guards and the Rottweilers. There’s no way in hell anyone’s coming back here tonight to do more damage. And I’m armed to the teeth.”

  Buddy reluctantly saw his brother’s logic. He also considered who’d known Mei and Ben had gone to Greenwich. He hadn’t told Chief Malone, Vidas, Ray Sawyer, or anyone else. How had the killer discovered their location? Someone, he concluded, must have guessed or followed them.

  He said, “You’ve got to stay with Mei and Ben at all times.”

  “I will,” Ward confirmed. “They’re taking over the master bedroom. They’ll try to rest, but I won’t sleep at all. I’ll be sitting in a chair, awake the entire night. You have my word. And then tomorrow I’ll personally drive them back to Mei’s place at the Carlyle. Tonight has shown us the killer knows everything. He’s omniscient.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Several hours later, at dawn, a solitary figure stood at the southwest corner of Central Park. He looked past the cars going around Columbus Circle to the dark towers of Time Warner Center. The frigid wind had no effect on him. He was hot inside. He was ready.

  But last night he’d dived through a window at the estate of Ward Mills. His forearms were sore where he’d gone through the glass. Body armor had protected him from the bullets, leaving only bruises. Yet he’d shrug off his failure to kill the boy last night. He’d use the soreness and pain as motivation. He knew he couldn’t be stopped. He was free and he was right.

  In the two years he’d spent planning the events that began on New Year’s Eve at Camp Kateri, he’d studied the security protocols at Time Warner Center. He’d been in the buildings two dozen times. He’d observed the doormen, the guards behind the desk, the numerous cameras mounted to the high ceilings that observed and recorded everyone who arrived and departed.

  He smiled to himself, knowing he’d learned how to gain entrance to the condominium unobserved and anonymously. The method he’d devised wasn’t to walk in the front door. No, he wouldn’t walk at all. He’d be brought in by someone else.

  When darkness covered the city, he’d execute his plan. Execute, he thought. A fitting word.

  He took a last yearning glance at the top floor of the tower, and then turned away and melted into the throngs of pedestrians going to work.

  Chapter Fifty

  That morning Buddy drove down to SoHo for an interview with Dietrich Brook. He sipped from a large black Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. He ran the heater hot. After he’d pulled the Charger in front of a former warehouse on Greene Street, h
e looked up at the building’s high walls—walls that seemed forbidding and insurmountable.

  After climbing out, he stood for a moment at the corner and watched bundled-up people push forward to the curb. Many had wrapped their faces in scarves. Most wore stocking caps or other hats. Some wore sunglasses despite the grayness of the day. All had turned up their collars against the needlelike wind. He saw a homeless man shuffle up beside him. The man wore a stained red parka much too large for him, a Mariners baseball hat, and mismatched black leather gloves. He pushed a metal Whole Foods shopping cart filled with a sleeping bag and clothes that were old, greasy, dirty. Buddy looked at the man’s face. He had a bulbous nose and bright blue eyes that were intensely focused on the stoplight.

  Where was the man going? Buddy wondered. A shelter? A place to buy coffee and something warm to eat? A liquor store?

  Buddy said, “You need anything?”

  The man looked up at him and shook his head. “No, sir. I’m good. Gotta hoof it.”

  The light turned and the man shoved his cart into the intersection. He moved with purpose. Buddy wondered what kept him going, day after day in the cold. The basic animal desire to survive? Perhaps in the end this was all that mattered. Buddy knew he didn’t have the inner strength of this man. He knew that if he didn’t have Mei and his work, there wouldn’t be a reason to keep going. Everything, including himself, would just stop.

  He thought he should have offered the man five dollars. Or ten. For coffee or a sandwich or even for whiskey. But he was already turning toward the large building to his right.

  After buzzing through the street-level security door, Buddy rode up in the elevator to an upper floor. Dietrich Brook opened the heavy stainless steel sliding door and offered his hand to Buddy. “Detective,” he said.

  Dietrich Brook was handsome, with graying brown hair over a patrician high forehead and a sculpted jawline. He wore black trousers of fine wool, a gray zip-up turtleneck sweater, and loafers with silver horse bits. Lean and almost gaunt, as if he ran marathons, and forty-eight years old, he was a strong and sleek animal with none of the puffed-up muscles exhibited by his brother Carl. His eyes were blue and abnormal. They weren’t only cold and lacking expression, they seemed lifeless.

  Buddy shook Dietrich’s hand. It was as firm as Carl Brook’s grip. Strong enough to wield a hatchet with ease, Buddy thought. He said, “Thanks for agreeing to an interview. I’m looking for any information that might help identify the person who . . . who has caused such damage to your family.”

  Brook’s eyes remained expressionless, but his brow furrowed. “Thank you, Detective.” His voice was in the middle range, calm but authoritative. “We don’t know who’s done these things or why.”

  “I understand,” Buddy said. “But sometimes people have information they don’t realize is important to the case.”

  Brook said, “We can spare a few minutes, but not long. Talking about it is painful.”

  “I understand,” Buddy said again.

  Brook watched him warily. “We grieve in our own ways.”

  Buddy nodded slowly.

  Dietrich Brook led him into the condo. Long ago the high-ceilinged room with concrete columns and concrete floors and brick walls had been cheap. But no more. This much space in SoHo, with its twenty-foot ceilings and huge windows, was worth a fortune. The Brooks had decorated the living room with industrial-type furniture mixed with an enormous but low sectional the color of tobacco. There was modern sculpture of metal and plastic and fur, all of it ugly, to Buddy’s eyes. And on a brick wall facing this hodgepodge hung an enormous painting that was everything its surroundings were not: beautiful, elegant, filled with light and placid water reflecting a shimmering sun above sepia-colored buildings.

  Buddy stopped. He couldn’t help it.

  Dietrich Brook stood beside him and said, “Canaletto.”

  “What?”

  “A who not a what. This is by Canaletto, the Venetian painter from the Renaissance. This shows a view of the Grand Canal, and here”—Dietrich Brook pointed—“is the Doge’s Palace.”

  Buddy followed Brook’s index finger, but every building on the Grand Canal looked like a palace to him. And what was a doge? He just nodded and wondered if the painting had once belonged to someone who’d been sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

  He wondered the same thing about another piece on the next wall, this one of a statuesque man with wings looking down upon a young woman who cowered in his presence. Buddy assumed it was the angel Gabriel—or was it Michael?—appearing to the Virgin Mary.

  Dietrich Brook extended a hand toward the open kitchen adjacent to the living room and said, “Detective Lock, this is my wife, Lydia, and my daughter, Hayley.”

  Buddy looked over at them. Lydia Brook was tall and attractive, with chestnut-colored hair. She wore blue jeans and a cable-knit ivory-colored fisherman’s sweater that fit her elegant frame perfectly. Except for her ashen skin, she was a classically beautiful woman fit for a billionaire. The daughter, Hayley, had fair skin, full lips, and blonde hair pulled into a braided ponytail. Around eighteen years of age, she wore tight Lululemon yoga pants, a blue chambray shirt with its top three buttons undone, and brown knee-high boots.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  Lydia Brook stepped forward. “How is my nephew?”

  Buddy’s stomach tightened, but he said, very calmly, “He’s well.”

  “Can he come to live here?”

  Hayley added, “We miss him.”

  Buddy knew he was in danger of losing control of his emotions. “Ben’s in police custody pending completion of this investigation,” he told them. Relieved that nobody challenged him, he said, “I won’t interview you together because I want your recollections, one at a time, rather than everyone’s recollections jumbled together.”

  Dietrich Brook shook his head. “No, Detective. This morning you’ll interview me. Nobody else.”

  Buddy showed no reaction, and when Dietrich Brook left the kitchen, walked past him, and headed through the cavernous living room to a back hallway, Buddy followed. A few yards into the hallway, they came to a door on the left. He entered an office complete with a modern desk with stainless steel legs and a glass top, and a futuristic black chair. His feet made a scratching noise as he trod across a rug made of dried grasses.

  Dietrich Brook sat in the chair behind the desk but said nothing.

  Buddy sat in an armchair on the other side of the desk. He switched on his digital audio recorder, set it on the desk, and faced Dietrich Brook.

  “Dietrich Brook,” he began, “did you hear or see anything unusual on New Year’s Eve?”

  “No,” Dietrich said, without hesitation.

  “Think about it for a while,” Buddy suggested.

  “I have, but there’s nothing.”

  He watched Dietrich’s eyes. They were opaque, an unreadable mask.

  Buddy said, “No guests present? No unusual staff?”

  “No.”

  “Did any member of the family argue with any other member of the family?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “No disagreement with any of your brothers?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t argue about whether to sell Brook Instruments?”

  Dietrich Brook smiled. “I wouldn’t say we argued. Our positions were nothing new.” Dietrich Brook pushed out his chin, perhaps to show that he’d accept no guff from Buddy. He continued, “For the past several years, Carl and I have wanted to sell the company, and Alton and Bruno have not.”

  Buddy nodded once and changed direction. “Has anyone filed a claim or made noises about filing a claim against your art collection?”

  “No one.”

  “Do you know of any claims against any of your brothers’ art collections?”

  “No, I do not. And the deaths of my brothers have nothing to do with art.”

  Buddy raised an eyebrow. “How can you be sure?”

&nb
sp; Dietrich opened his hands. “Because the collections are worth more than two billion dollars. Most of the paintings are hung with French cleats, so you can lift them off the walls fairly easily. Yet not one of them is missing.”

  “What about the work that Jewish prisoners were forced to perform for your grandfather’s company during the Third Reich? Could any of their descendants be after your family?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t been contacted or threatened by any Holocaust survivors or their descendants, either in written or oral communications?”

  Brook’s face showed irritation. “Oh, I suppose people might contact us, asking for money—reparations, they call it. But we pass those letters on to our lawyers, who handle it. I give it no attention.”

  Buddy stared into the dead blue eyes. He said, “Are you sorry for what your grandfather did?”

  “Not at all,” Dietrich Brook replied, shaking his head. “The work he gave those people kept them alive as long as possible. Who knows, maybe they survived because of my grandfather.”

  Buddy wasn’t sure if Dietrich really believed his grandfather bore no responsibility for using Jewish slave labor during the Holocaust, but he knew he’d get nothing more on the subject. So he took the gloves off. It was part of the job. He said, “Now that your brothers Alton and Bruno are gone, you and Carl can sell Brook Instruments, can’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Won’t you and Carl cash in?”

  Dietrich’s face turned dark red. “Detective, you’re implying I killed my brothers and their families for money. What kind of idiot are you?”

  Buddy ignored the insult. “Don’t Alton’s and Bruno’s shares come to you and Carl?”

  Dietrich Brook’s eyes didn’t show anger but instead became cold blue discs. With strange calm he said, “Detective, you’re out of your depth.”

  Buddy kept up the barrage. “Since you and Carl control the majority of the voting shares of Brook Instruments, why can’t you vote to sell it?”